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SCIENCE & LITERATURE--Together at Last
Only 50 years ago British historian C. P. Snow lamented that Science and the Humanities were two distinct and separate cultures. Today we may see them increasingly coming together. Please post here "science that reads like a novel", and "Novels based on real science" Science fiction is not out of bounds, but only if the science is hard and central to the story.
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Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon
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4.02 avg rating — 2,655 ratings
score: 64,
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| 202 |
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Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface
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3.41 avg rating — 294 ratings
score: 63,
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| 203 |
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Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures
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3.86 avg rating — 345 ratings
score: 62,
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| 204 |
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Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
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3.52 avg rating — 1,143 ratings
score: 61,
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| 204 |
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Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist
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2.83 avg rating — 29 ratings
score: 61,
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| 206 |
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Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe
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3.52 avg rating — 457 ratings
score: 60,
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| 207 |
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Zeitgeist, Naturwissenschaft und die Suche nach Gott in John Updikes Romanen: "The Poorhouse Fair", "Roger’s Version" und "Toward the End of Time" (Mainzer Studien zur Amerikanistik)
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0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
score: 59,
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| 207 |
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Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (South Sea Books)
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3.64 avg rating — 22 ratings
score: 59,
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1 person voted
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| 209 |
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A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
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4.11 avg rating — 3,742 ratings
score: 58,
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| 210 |
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Voices in the Ocean
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4.04 avg rating — 3,320 ratings
score: 57,
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| 211 |
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Breakpoint
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3.37 avg rating — 561 ratings
score: 56,
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| 211 |
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The Coming Global Superstorm
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3.62 avg rating — 437 ratings
score: 56,
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1 person voted
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| 213 |
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The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
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3.82 avg rating — 13,996 ratings
score: 55,
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| 214 |
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Dirt to Soil: One Family's Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture
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4.46 avg rating — 2,300 ratings
score: 54,
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| 215 |
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The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
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3.71 avg rating — 2,494 ratings
score: 53,
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1 person voted
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| 216 |
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Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources
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4.71 avg rating — 28 ratings
score: 52,
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| 216 |
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Heroic Animals: 100 Amazing Creatures Great and Small
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3.94 avg rating — 313 ratings
score: 52,
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| 218 |
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Remarkable Creatures
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Tracy Chevalier (Goodreads Author)
3.89 avg rating — 54,818 ratings
score: 51,
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| 219 |
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Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures
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3.79 avg rating — 3,833 ratings
score: 50,
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| 220 |
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Wildhood: The Astounding Connections between Human and Animal Adolescents
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4.12 avg rating — 504 ratings
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| 221 |
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Under the Chinook Arch
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3.77 avg rating — 13 ratings
score: 48,
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1 person voted
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| 222 |
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Fire on the Mountain
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3.99 avg rating — 2,682 ratings
score: 47,
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| 223 |
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The Plague Dogs
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3.89 avg rating — 8,768 ratings
score: 46,
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| 224 |
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The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel
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3.94 avg rating — 269 ratings
score: 45,
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| 224 |
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The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History
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Molly Caldwell Crosby (Goodreads Author)
3.91 avg rating — 6,675 ratings
score: 45,
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| 226 |
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Fermat's Enigma
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4.30 avg rating — 32,941 ratings
score: 44,
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| 226 |
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Plagues and Peoples
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3.87 avg rating — 4,953 ratings
score: 44,
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| 228 |
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Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
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4.16 avg rating — 3,770 ratings
score: 43,
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| 229 |
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The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic
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4.18 avg rating — 3,566 ratings
score: 42,
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| 230 |
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Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History, Vol. I)
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4.37 avg rating — 3,495 ratings
score: 41,
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| 231 |
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Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
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3.94 avg rating — 19,766 ratings
score: 40,
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| 232 |
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Lancet
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4.53 avg rating — 32 ratings
score: 39,
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| 233 |
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A Friend of the Earth
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T. Coraghessan Boyle (Goodreads Author)
3.68 avg rating — 3,733 ratings
score: 38,
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| 234 |
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Congo
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3.63 avg rating — 177,311 ratings
score: 37,
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| 235 |
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The Terminal Man
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3.41 avg rating — 30,144 ratings
score: 36,
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| 236 |
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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3.83 avg rating — 646,852 ratings
score: 35,
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| 237 |
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Lucifer's Hammer
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really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 45,122 ratings
score: 34,
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| 238 |
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State of Wonder
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3.90 avg rating — 198,391 ratings
score: 33,
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| 239 |
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Chernobyl: A Novel
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3.86 avg rating — 537 ratings
score: 32,
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| 240 |
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The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1)
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Mary Doria Russell (Goodreads Author)
4.14 avg rating — 80,692 ratings
score: 31,
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| 241 |
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The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, #2)
by
Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)
4.27 avg rating — 25,063 ratings
score: 30,
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| 242 |
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The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)
by
Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)
4.34 avg rating — 22,863 ratings
score: 29,
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| 243 |
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Cryptonomicon
by
Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)
4.23 avg rating — 116,017 ratings
score: 28,
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1 person voted
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| 244 |
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)
by
Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)
3.92 avg rating — 43,056 ratings
score: 27,
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| 245 |
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The Collector of Worlds: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton
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3.46 avg rating — 1,307 ratings
score: 26,
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Comments Showing 1-7 of 7 (7 new)
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message 1:
by
Hazel
(new)
Apr 03, 2010 07:07AM
I have trouble thinking of Michael Crichton's books as 'literature'...
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Hazel wrote: "I have trouble thinking of Michael Crichton's books as 'literature'..."Point taken. NEXT was not ready for publication IMO. On the other hand, Crichton may have known he was on short time when he wrote it. He's an Idea Man (PC: Idea Person), not a writer. Never was.
Thom wrote: "He's an Idea Man (PC: Idea Person), not a writer. Never was."Agreed. Great ideas.
I wouldn't think Frankenstein was out. Many regard it as the first work of science fiction (after Le Dernier Homme), but it is certainly literature, IMO.
Ok, I added it then. I thought maybe the "science" in it wasn't "hard" enough, as per your description above. Given that all we know is that Frankenstein took some body parts and stuck them together and used something....not sure what....(I think Shelley makes a reference to "galvinism" somewhere) to animate them. It didn't seem terribly realistic to me but I'll go with your ruling.
Lobstergirl wrote: "Ok, I added it then. I thought maybe the "science" in it wasn't "hard" enough, as per your description above. Given that all we know is that Frankenstein took some body parts and stuck them toget..."Allessandro Volta succeeded with electricity in making the limbs of a dead frog move, and this around 1793, if memory serves. So Mary Shelley was indeed aware of the "hard" science of the time....perhaps, I think, maybe, IMO.
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